I think I know where you're coming from dude. I think chemicals flowing around in the brain are a way for it to interact with this spiritual side (like a currency for it, if you will). I was over emphasising the scientific part a little, cos it can sometimes be hard to relate to spiritual talk, and I see these chemical reactions as a very pretty physical illustration of some of this beauty that is also grounded in some undeniable technological research.Torque wrote: I understand what your talking about by inducing a chemical release in the brain with music but i believe there's something a step beyond that. I took my cue from Nikola Tesla when he stated that everything in the universe is made up of frequency. All we are doing in the end is playing with resonant frequencies when we're making music. When people relate a certain key or scale or mode to sound a certain way like sad, happy, ominus etc.... it's because the sound of certain frequencies together and the way they interfere with each other resonate with the way the human brain sends out signals thereby causing it to release chemicals that fool it into thinking or feeling the way the music is meant to portray. The people that seem to be the best at making music are those who are more open minded to the thoughts of other people and can see an argument from both sides.
I believe music is a spiritual practice as much as it is a physical one.
P.S.
I am not a scientist so i have no idea if this is the way it works but it's the way i like to think of it working. I hope my rambling made sense to somebody out there.
I would say though, that I think certain chemicals like weed can be beneficial to the creative process (big emphasis on the can part though). For me personally, it gives me a very nice way to escape my normal routine and approach sound from a different mindset. There have been lots of times when I've abused this though, and I've got into a long lasting messy routine... where my brains system for reward has gotten rewired to only feeling pleasure when I had THC floating around, which made me really quite self centered, and I'm pretty sure I was just making music as an excuse to get stoned and feel personal pleasure (still not completely out of this mindset I don't think). And obviously this is pretty much the opposite of where I'd wanna be to to make useful music for other people.
I think one very important thing to say here though, is that everybody has their own system for using/not using certain things. And I think to find this stuff out for yourself can be a very useful learning experience in itself. I learnt a lot from some of the stuff on the internet though... www.bluelight.ru and www.erowid.org have some great info (as well as some pretty awful stuff).
